Four Hands Episode 7: Lee Jun-young's Amnesia Was a Lie All Along

Episode 7 of tvN's Four Hands (directed by Park Hyun-seok, written by Shin I-won) delivered the show's sharpest reversal yet: Lee Jun-young's conductor Choi Jeong-yo, who had publicly claimed a nine-year memory loss, remembers everything. The revelation reframes the entire series up to this point, shifting the drama from a story about a fractured reunion into something closer to a long-running deception with an unclear endgame.

The return, and what it cost

The episode opens with Choi Jeong-yo appearing at an international conducting competition under the alias Luca Dominico, where he wins the top prize. Pianist Kang Bi-o (Song Kang), who had spent years not knowing whether his closest friend was alive, immediately goes to Choi's hotel to find him. The hotel staff relay Choi's response: he does not know this person. At a subsequent press event, Choi sidesteps questions about whether he is the pianist Choi Jeong-yo who vanished nine years ago. It is only through a news broadcast that Kang Bi-o learns Choi has claimed to have lost all memory of his past in an accident and has been living as Luca Dominico ever since.

Kang Bi-o eventually reaches Choi through a staff contact and gets a brief, cold audience. He asks what happened to Choi's memory, why he switched from piano to conducting, whether he will ever play again. Choi deflects every question and ends the meeting abruptly.

The two meet again, unexpectedly, at their shared alma mater in Korea. Choi has returned because the Korean Symphony's director Yoon Seon-ju (Seo Jae-hee) offered him a guest conductor position; he visits the school out of curiosity. Kang Bi-o is there struggling with a flare-up of tenosynovitis that has stalled his playing. When Choi notices him hesitating at a piano, he reads the situation quickly and opens up about his own: nine years ago a gunshot wound to his right shoulder damaged the nerves in his fingers, ending his career as a pianist and forcing the transition to conducting. "I can overcome a slump, but I can't play piano at all," he tells Kang Bi-o. "If anything, I envy you."

Suspicion falls on the mother

The disclosure hits Kang Bi-o harder than expected. It also triggers a memory: on the night Choi Jeong-yo disappeared nine years ago, his mother Kang Ji-hye (Yoon Se-ah) came home in the early hours of the morning. He tests her by casually mentioning in front of her that Choi has reappeared, then watches her face. Her reaction is enough. He contacts private investigator Martin Vogel (Go Chang-seok), who previously helped him search for any trace of Choi's survival, and asks him to quietly investigate who was actually behind Choi's abduction.

Kang Ji-hye's hostility to Choi's return has already surfaced in another direction. When chairman Kang Seung-un (Jung Jin-young) instructs Yoon Seon-ju to recruit Choi as a guest conductor for the Korean Symphony, Kang Ji-hye pushes back hard, citing the pain it will cause her son. She even threatens to cut off the symphony's subsidies. Yoon Seon-ju proceeds with the offer regardless.

The collaboration proposal, and what it refuses

Now installed as a guest conductor, Choi proposes that Kang Bi-o perform as soloist on his debut program with the orchestra, framing it as an attempt to give Kang Bi-o a reason to play through his slump. The proposal is complicated by the fact that Hong Jae-in (Jang Gyu-ri), who arranged the conversation between them, did so without asking Kang Bi-o first. Feeling bypassed and still wary, Kang Bi-o declines.

The lie confirmed

The episode's final scene is the one that changes the show's shape. Choi walks to a storage space at Nakwon Arcade, a building in Seoul long associated with musical instrument dealers, that he and Kang Bi-o used as a hideout when they were young. He finds it without any hesitation. He also recognizes immediately the piano they once played together. The show then layers in what the audience already half-suspected: Choi had watched a past interview in which Kang Bi-o downplayed how close the two of them had been, and was wounded enough by it to decide to play the amnesia fiction. When Kang Bi-o came looking for him, Choi turned him away on purpose.

What Choi actually wants from his return, and whether Kang Ji-hye's involvement in the attack nine years ago is as deep as Kang Bi-o suspects, are now the central questions the show is building toward.